Digiday

Beverage giant Molson Coors is overhauling how its legal and marketing teams work with creators, shifting from its traditional TV-style approval process in favor of faster, looser briefs. The company began working on the new approach in March, along with its creative agency Movers+Shakers’ new consultancy group The Shake Squad. Since then Molson Coors says engagement with its creator content has quadrupled.

This Future of Marketing Briefing covers the latest in marketing for Digiday+ members and is distributed over email every Friday at 10 a.m. ET. More from the series → Yes, more thoughts on what it means, or doesn’t, that Publicis walked away from competing for Coca-Cola’s media dollars to grab PepsiCo’s instead. But in my defense, it felt right to wait until the hot takes, livestreams and articles on the fallout died down a bit.

The CMO was once a true partner to the CEO, grounded in a shared language of customers, margins and growth. That alignment ensured marketing had a permanent voice in the room where budgets were set and strategic bets were made. This was the era when figures like David Ogilvy were not just advertising leaders, but influential voices in business strategy, shaping how companies thought about growth, brand and the customer.

By Seb Joseph  •  September 10, 2026  • Omnicom’s CFO is still trying to get his head around what went wrong. It’s been a little over a week since the holdco lost one of its longest running clients to Publicis. He called the loss “disappointing” and “unfortunate.” Now, he and the rest of the C-suite are doing a post-mortem to figure out why it happened.

By Seb Joseph  •  September 10, 2026  • Last September, Netflix. This September, ChatGPT. Amazon has cut a deal to let its advertisers buy ads from the popular AI-powered chatbot, adding to a long list of premium supply its spent more than a year locking down. From today (September 10), advertisers using Amazon Ads — the retail giant’s advertising platform, which includes its buying tool, the Amazon DSP — can buy ads inside the ChatGPT app.

U.S. advertising spending is set to rise faster than expected this year, but so is the proportion of ad dollars spent through AI or automated campaign types like Meta’s Advantage+ or Google’s Performance Max. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) estimates that U.S. ad spend will grow 12.3% this year, up from its previous estimate of 9.5%. David Cohen, CEO of the IAB, said the upward revision was the result of strong spending around the Winter Olympics and soccer’s World Cup.

In the age of generative and agentic AI, agencies are barreling toward a software as a service business model. That’s starting to show up in contracts. None of the four agency execs Digiday spoke with, however, say they’re not ready to overhaul their MSAs — at least not yet. Increasingly, agencies are using AI tools to automate more parts of the marketing workflow. They’re also peddling proprietary generative AI tools to woo clients, win new business and compete in the AI arms race.

This Media Briefing covers the latest in media trends for Digiday+ members and is distributed over email every Thursday at 10 a.m. ET. More from the series → This week’s Media Briefing looks at how publishers are preparing for a “Google Zero” future by moving beyond SEO tweaks and reshaping their teams, roles and audience strategies around a post-search era. Publishers spent much of this year bracing for a world with fewer Google search referrals.

Retail giants like Walmart, Kroger and Amazon have launched AI assistants allowing consumers to ask for recommendations or curated shopping lists. Now, Instacart has made it easier for other retailers such as regional grocers to follow in their footsteps. On Wednesday, Instacart announced the launch of Cart Assistant, a white-label assistant that retailers can implement on their own websites and apps.

This is part of a series that explores the once lucrative and tumultuous ad tech industry. More from the series → Last week’s remedies ruling in the U.S. Justice Department’s antitrust case against Google and its ad tech offering, i.e., the sell-side assets of Google Ad Manager (formerly DoubleClick), resolved the most consequential question facing its ad tech business: the company will not be forced to break it apart.