News

We’re excited to share that Genius Monkey has launched a brand-new mobile dashboard, giving you the power to check in on your campaigns from anywhere, at any time. We’ve always believed that great advertising starts with great data. That’s why our reporting tools are built to show you the full customer journey, down to the individual impression. Now, all of that insight is available right in your pocket. Whether you’re in a meeting, traveling, or just stepping away from your desk, staying up-to-date with your latest campaign trends has never been easier.

Introduction On April 25, 2026, an AI coding agent called Cursor deleted the entire production database of PocketOS, a software company serving car rental businesses. One routine task, one credential mismatch, one autonomous decision to “fix” the problem without asking anyone, and an entire company’s data was gone in nine seconds flat. If you work in advertising and your first reaction was “that’s a tech problem, not my problem,” we’d encourage you to think again.

AI is everywhere in advertising right now, and audiences are starting to notice. Trust is taking a hit across the board, not because AI is inherently untrustworthy, but because nobody’s been clear about when and how it’s being used. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) released its “AI Transparency and Disclosure Framework” to start fixing that. It gives advertisers an actual standard to follow, instead of guessing. In this week’s blog, we’re breaking down the state of AI in advertising and walking through the IAB’s framework: what it covers, what it skips, and what it means for advertisers running programmatic campaigns.

News from the NRF’s Big Show 2026 Google Announces Universal Commerce Protocol Google is taking a big step toward standardizing how AI Agents can interact with generative AI chatbots. Enter UCP – universal commerce protocol – a global protocol designed to talk to and welcome existing agent protocols. Developed in tandem with a number of big names in ecommerce like Etsy and Shopify, UCP should allow advertisers to more precisely personalize shopping suggestions delivered by Gemini.

2025 will likely be remembered as the year when all the predictions, noise, and media shifts became too big to ignore. For years, advertisers heard about looming disruption – AI, streaming, creator economies, consolidation – but this past year is when those forces fully materialized. We’ve seen the integration of AI into virtually every workflow, dramatic shifts in how consumers discover and relate to brands, and the early warning signs of potential issues as mega-corporations continue to grow and consolidate their power.

Netflix Closes a Deal to Buy WBD; Paramount Steps Up On December 5th, 2025, Netflix announced a deal to purchase Warner Bros Discovery (WBD), including all the IP rights, studios, and streaming audience of about 128 million subscribers. The announced $83 billion buyout equates to about $27.75 per share, but does not include Warner-owned cable channels like CNN and TNT. The questions and discussions were ongoing when, on December 8th, Paramount complicated matters with a hostile takeover offer of $30 per share, coming out to an all-cash deal of $108 billion.

The first of two lawsuits against Google has finally reached its conclusion; found guilty of antitrust behaviors, it’s now time for the tech giant to face the music with a ruling on the Search case. Did the DOJ get its wish to have Chrome sold? How will this actually help Genius Monkey’s programmatic targeting, and what can users expect to come from the government’s required remedies? Let’s dig in and find out what advertisers need to know about this landmark ruling:

Bids are Already Coming in for Google Chrome When Google was ruled a monopoly (for the second time) last year, the list of possible repercussions included the sale of Google Chrome to break up the Search advertisement market. Very few seemed to take this suggestion seriously at the time, but the DOJ has doubled down, calling for the tech giant to fully divest itself from the world’s most popular web browser.

The Google Antitrust Case Probably Shut Down AppNexus They say time ravages all; well, time and AI have now caught up with one of the first big programmatic institutions. AppNexus wasn’t the first to engage in real-time bidding, but it was perhaps the first major platform that basically created and popularized the concept of a DSP. In 2018, AT&T bought AppNexus and renamed it to Xandr, before selling it once again to Microsoft in 2021.

Google Found Guilty of Antitrust Behavior… Again! In September 2024, the Department of Justice won their lawsuit against Google, alleging that the tech giant was exhibiting antitrust behaviors in their search advertising business. Google was declared a monopoly, but the punches didn’t stop there. The DOJ later took Google to court again over monopolistic actions in their adtech enterprises, and we now have a ruling on the side of the DOJ for this case.