Marketers don’t have a lot of trust when it comes to AI agents in ad buying yet. But that mistrust isn’t unfounded. Hallucinations are reason enough for guardrails, per execs. An incorrect CPM could make or break an ad buy, leaving the agency, instead of the agent holding the bag.
That’s what I asked Brandience’s Brian McHale when he briefed me on the agency’s new AI-generated “Synthetic Market Research & Testing” system.
The Minister of Communications and Digital Technology, Solly Malatsi, allocated R234 million to the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) in his budget vote speech on Tuesday. At the same time, Malatsi announced that the funding model study for the SABC had been completed. Malatsi’s department commissioned it to find an alternative to TV Licences.
A report from Sprout Social found that while 93% of industry professionals consider social media data collection to be important, just 36% use it to inform decisions outside of marketing.
As the SABC’s most struggling TV channel, Top Billing’s addition is single-handedly reviving SABC3’s moribund and sliding linear TV ratings, proving that original and high-quality production content will scoop up viewers for advertisers and bring them to the channel for appointment viewing.
Vicinity Media’s Omnichannel Analytics™ measures what out-of-home and mobile advertising actually does in the real world – not through a mountain of probabilistic data (that’s data that means something probably happened but has a degree of uncertainty) but through three clear, factual analytics that any marketer can understand and act on.
His current read is blunt. The world is not returning to the era of “globalisation on steroids”. Instead, marketers are operating in a more fragmented global pattern where growth is harder to find, risk is more unevenly distributed and market selection matters more.
Despite a slow start to the year as paid newspapers came under pressure in the first quarter of 2026, a stable performance from free newspapers meant that the overall newspaper circulation declined by only 1.3% year-on-year.
IAB Tech Lab and Deloitte research show first-party data fails without consent infrastructure – 82% of marketing leaders are already shifting their priorities.
Partnership brings Outmax’s AI capabilities to African markets, adding a new distribution channel in a high-growth digital advertising market, while delivering performance, transparency and measurable results to agencies and brands across the continent.