Adnami is expanding its offering by extending Sonar’s attention reporting capabilities to include Meta platforms. Advertisers can now compare attention results for campaigns on Facebook and Instagram alongside the open web, creating a consistent view across channels. Bringing Meta into the same attention framework used on the open web enables brands and agencies to compare outcomes like-for-like and direct budgets with greater confidence. In an environment where walled gardens define their own metrics and reporting, Adnami maps Meta’s signals through Sonar’s established methodology, translating them into standardised attention KPIs that align with Sonar measurement across other platforms and formats.
A new study reveals that UK creators are proving themselves as successful entrepreneurs as the creator economy continues to grow internationally. The Visa ‘Monetized Report’ showcases how TikTok creators are actively developing business skills – blending self-taught lessons and peer learning, particularly in areas like contract negotiation and financial management. This drive is already turning into tangible success, with the report revealing the majority of UK based creators earn £1,600 or more per month, with 34% receiving between £1,600 and £3,999. Optimism is high, with 88% of creators worldwide expecting their revenue to increase over the next year, reflecting growing ambition in their earning potential. The report also highlights that UK creators are asserting their role in the business ecosystem, with 73% viewing their content creation as a small business and 54% identifying as successful entrepreneurs. Read the Visa x TikTok ‘Monetized Report’ here.
HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has partnered with Sky Media, the advertising arm of Sky, to launch a new national campaign fronted by football legend and broadcaster Jill Scott. The campaign encourages people to download the HMRC app, giving them an easier way to manage their tax and finances, including secure methods to pay their Self Assessment tax bill or claim tax refunds and instant access to their National Insurance records and state pension information. Aimed at supporting millions across the UK including self-employed workers and small business owners as they prepare for the 31 January Self Assessment filing and payment deadline. OmniGOV at MG OMD led the strategy and partnership, recognising Sky’s ability to connect HMRC with its key audiences through relatable content and familiar faces. Produced by Sky Media Productions, the creative showcases the HMRC app as a simple, all-in-one solution for claiming tax refunds, checking National Insurance details, and accessing pension information. Leveraging AdSmart’s precision targeting across both linear and on-demand audiences, the campaign delivers tailored messages to key demographics, highlighting pension tools for 50–65s, claim tax refunds for 35–49s, and finding your National Insurance Number for 18–34s — ensuring the right messages reach the right audience at the right time.
Gen Z leave more online reviews than any previous generation, according to new figures. Eight in ten Gen Z adults say they leave reviews – with three in ten of them (28%) leaving an online review at least once a week. The group is 6x more likely to leave reviews on a weekly basis than Baby Boomers (4%), and 4x more likely than Gen X (6%). The consumer research, commissioned by Trustpilot, indicates that the younger generations have higher customer service standards. Although the research found that Gen Z report being more likely to be critical than other generations, with 36% saying they are the most forgiving generation when it comes to customer service, meaning brands that engage with feedback can win back their trust. For Gen Z, negative customer reviews impact their trust in a brand more than anything else – with this generation more than twice as likely to lose trust in a brand with negative online reviews than one with an unethical code of conduct (37% vs 14%).
Anonymised and Bytek today announced a strategic partnership that marks a new step forward in the secure and predictive activation of first-party data. Prediction and detection algorithms are at the core of the Bytek Prediction Platform, the prediction platform that unlocks the power of secure, privacy-compliant first-party data for enterprise advertisers. These models enable the creation of audiences based on product and thematic interests, as well as predictive segments built on customer lifetime value (Predictive LTV) and conversion probability (Action Prediction). These audiences are then activated through Anonymised’s technology, which ensures the secure processing of Bytek’s raw analytics and eliminates the risks traditionally associated with sharing first-party data in digital advertising. Thanks to its advanced AI functions, Anonymised enables on-device targeting and measurement of ID-less audiences, turning predictive data into more accurate, measurable campaigns that work across all devices and fully comply with the highest privacy standards.
New emotional response data from System1’s Test Your Ad platform and Competitive Edge database shows that this year’s festive ad frontrunners are leaning into characters, consistency, and cultural nostalgia. 2025 is shaping up to be the most competitive and consistent Christmas yet, with early airers averaging a strong 4.6-Star Rating. Leading the pack is Amazon’s re-air of “Joy Ride”, returning with an impressive 5.9 Stars. Heathrow has rekindled the magic of its beloved Bears from 2016, while Boots is priming itself for long-term success with the introduction of “Puss in Boots” as a character fluent device that could anchor future campaigns. It’s a winning strategy also powering Aldi’s success, as Kevin the Carrot continues his decade-long run of festive fame and helps the supermarket achieve a record score for a 10s teaser.
As household budgets tighten and shoppers become more selective, loyalty across UK retail is slipping. New data from Reward, the global leader in Customer Engagement and Commerce Media, shows that just 61% of shoppers returned to the same retailer in 2025, down from 65% last year – a four-point decline that signals growing pressure on brand relationships. Drawn from 1.4 billion anonymised transactions across 4,000 retailers, and published in Reward’s latest report “Lessons in Loyalty: Turning Festive Peaks into Year-Round Engagement”, the findings reflect the impact of constrained spending power. Essential spend now accounts for 58% of household budgets, up from 48% two years ago, leaving shoppers with less discretionary income and a sharper focus on value that feels personal and meaningful. For the full analysis see Reward’s report: “Lessons in Loyalty: Turning Festive Peaks into Year-Round Engagement.”
Innovid, the independent software platform for the creation, delivery, measurement, and optimization of advertising, today unveiled new AI agents alongside Innovid Orchestrator™ – the industry’s first full-cycle AI orchestration superagent built to connect people, data, and technology across the advertising lifecycle. The launch introduces a suite of specialized AI agents that automate core advertising functions across creative, delivery, measurement, and optimization, and Innovid Orchestrator, which connects them all. Innovid Orchestrator combines the power of Innovid’s pre-built AI agents through an open orchestration layer, uniting human input, proprietary data, and external systems and agents. The result is a living system of intelligence that automates workflows, amplifies creativity, and drives measurable results for every channel, platform, and partner. Marketers and their partners also get the flexibility to Bring Your Own Agents (BYOA) or integrate external models, data, and tools for complete interoperability.
Hightouch, the leader in data and AI for marketing and personalization, today unveils a purpose-built AI marketing platform that understands your customers, campaigns, and brand. Hightouch Agents is a purpose-built AI platform that augments marketing teams at each step of the marketing process. It helps automate slow and manual tasks while accelerating creative and strategic ones. Unlike generic AI solutions, Hightouch Agents are powered by a proprietary context layer that gives AI full knowledge of your customer data, marketing campaigns, and brand. Customer data comes from connecting to data warehouses, systems of record like CRMs, and e-commerce systems. Campaign information like videos, images, and performance metrics come from prebuilt integrations to ad networks and marketing tools. Brand context can be incorporated by connecting brand guidelines, strategy documents, and other internal knowledge sources.
Adclear, the AI “FinProm” compliance platform relied on by the UK’s top finance brands, has raised an oversubscribed £2.1m Seed round led by Outward VC and backed by AFG Partners and Tenity. Angels include Clearscore founder Dan Cobley, and Coinbase‘s UK MD Keith Grose, who invested as part of a16z scout fund and angel community Ventures Together. Haatch and Force Over Mass Capital are also backing the round, after investing in the company at pre-seed. Having launched in 2024, Adclear’s AI-powered platform is already relied on by marketing teams at leading banks and fintechs including the UK’s biggest neobank, Lloyds Banking Group, PensionBee, Plum, Yonder, InvestEngine, ActivTrades and Trade Nation. With ARR increasing 10x since its pre-seed raise in January 2025, Adclear is rapidly becoming the dominant player in the UK’s financial promotions (FinProm) market. Adclear automates the compliance checks finance companies must make on all their marketing content and product updates. The technology is used by banks, fintechs, crypto and trading platforms to ensure everything they share with customers complies with all relevant regulations, whilst providing an in-depth audit trail for compliance teams.
Adthena, an AI-driven search intelligence platform, has announced it has been recognized by Google as a Trusted Trademark Partner, a status that signals a high level of expertise with Google’s ads trademark policy, a consistent high submission quality, and a close working relationship with Google. The partnership follows a year-long joint initiative to meet Google’s highest quality and performance standards, resulting in Adthena being officially recognized as the first partner to achieve the status since the program’s inception. Together, the two companies are setting a new global benchmark for accuracy, automation, and transparency in safeguarding brands from trademark infringement in Google Ads.
Out-of-home (OOH) adtech provider Broadsign announced a collaboration with marketing technology provider StackAdapt and OOH media owner Branded Cities that brings automated, in-advance digital OOH (DOOH) ad transactions to North American advertisers. The strategic alliance will enable StackAdapt buyers to reserve DOOH inventory on the StackAdapt platform for omnichannel campaigns months in advance, starting with Branded Cities’ most popular large format, high-impact displays. Global Marketing B2B Agency Ledger Bennett is StackAdapt’s first customer to leverage the deal type, having executed an automated, guaranteed campaign for one of its signature clients in July. Through this collaboration, StackAdapt buyers can now easily reserve and book guaranteed Branded Cities inventory via programmatic pipes, eliminating the prolonged dialogue and manual setup typical of direct DOOH buys.
WARC has unveiled The Marketer’s Toolkit 2026, revealing five critical trends set to disrupt global marketing practices and reshape brand strategies in the year ahead. From the vanishing middle market and the creator investment gamble to the great escape, AI-driven zero-click journeys and shifting consumer milestones, the report provides marketers with essential insights to transform these disruptions into opportunities for growth. The trend identification for the report, now in its 15th year, is based on WARC’s proprietary GEISTE methodology which focuses on the broad macro trends across government, economy, industry, society, technology, and environment. It further incorporates a global survey of 1,000 plus marketing executives, one-to-one interviews with leading marketers worldwide, and analysis and insight from WARC’s global team of experts.
Public trust in mainstream media and AI is greater than trust in social media influencers and
government according to new research. Nearly half (44%) of those polled say they trust AI,
compared to the least trusted group which is social media influencers at just 24%. Traditional news outlets such as print, digital and television are trusted by 55% of adults, while only 38% trust the government. Scientists and experts remain the most trusted on 80%. The research reveals 27% of respondents now rely primarily on AI summaries so will never click on sources or citations to read the original story. Despite this people still care about the sources
as 82% care about where AI tools get their information. Nine in 10 (89%) expect the media to be transparent about its use of AI and 74% are concerned about the use of AI by the media. The poll of 5,020 UK adults was conducted by research firm OnePoll for a new white paper from creative content agency 72Point and AI transformation consultancy, Purposeful Relations.
The Independent and the charity Missing People have partnered on a Christmas fundraising appeal to launch a life changing service for the 70,000 children who go missing in the UK each year. This campaign is seeking to raise £165,000 to launch SafeCall, a cutting-edge service to reach missing young people in need of help across the UK. This includes a dedicated UK Helpline (with access to a trusted adult via chat, text and phone as well as a WhatsApp channel); a new 24/7 Chatbot to provide guidance when the Helpline is closed; and a new website offering advice and guidance targeted at young people. The overall aim of the SafeCall campaign is to get young, vulnerable people to safety as quickly as possible. Shocking statistics from Missing People show that 6 in 10 of all missing person reports are for young people in the 12-17 year old age group, while 1 in 10 children in care will go missing. Tragically, young people reported missing are at high risk of exploitation and homelessness.
